Mobile devices such as cellular telephones, smart phones, GPS systems, and cellular-enabled personal computers have become very common and very powerful. This combination of ubiquity and capability has created an ongoing demand for improved devices and unique applications. While applications currently exist for games, social networking, navigation, locating points of interest, location tracking, specialized advertising, and consumer and business-related services, even more capable, unique, and customizable applications are in demand.
A typical mobile device operates on a communication network that is provided by a mobile telephone operator. Such communication networks provide communication links and basic services such as time keeping and access to the public telephone network. A typically state-of-the-art mobile device, sometimes referred to as a smartphone, can have built in features such as communication ports, touch screen displays, keyboards, orientation sensors, accelerometers, cameras, one or more timers, microphones, audio outputs, memory card readers, significant internal memory, and specialized software. Such mobile devices can provide a wide range of functionality such as telephone communications, texting, calendars, alarms, memo and note recording, GPS navigation, music (MP3) and video (MP4) playback, video calling, conference calling, movie playback, picture taking and sending, games, e-mails, audio and video downloading, internet access and browsing, short range communications such as Bluetooth™, mobile banking, instant messaging and the ever-popular specialized ringtones.
Mobile devices are often used to connect a user to his or her social network. A social network as used herein denotes a social structure of contacts, referred to hereinafter as “nodes” that are connected to the user by some type of an interdependent relationship tie. An example of a social network would be a user's family, friends, classmates, religious affiliates, co-workers, teammates, and those having similar or overlapping interests, likes, and dislikes as that user and with which the user commonly socially interacts.
Social networks are inherently highly dynamic structures that can be subjected to a wide range of analyses using sociological network theory. In such analysis a network tree can be formed in which the various individuals are nodes while the relationships are ties. As the number of nodes increases, the network tree can grow dramatically in complexity. However, the social network of a single user can often provide a foundation for understanding just how that user functions in society, solves problems, succeeds or fails, and can help explain how a user's set of beliefs is formed and modified.
As noted above, social network are highly dynamic. Not only can major changes in a user's life, such as graduation, marriage, enlistment, a new job, or a change in location cause fundamental changes to a social network, but even relatively minor changes, such as a new interest or activity or the loss of an old one can be important.
Properly analyzed, a social network has applications to very wide ranges of activities, such as safety, marketing, and fraud detection. For example, sudden changes in a child's social network can raise safety concerns for their parents; a marketing recommendation from someone in a user's social network can be highly effective in inducing that user to try a product or service; and, if a particular social network is properly classified, that classification can provide a measure of trustworthiness in a financial transaction or suggest a false identity.